Week Twenty-Four

So my playoffs begin. I had three matchups this week, so I'll break them down briefly. I would say the most painful thing about the bye weeks was watching my best hitter (Arod) homer 7 times and my best pitcher (sabathia) throw 17 scoreless innings.

LongTime Yahoo League

Here, I had the #1 seed and was facing off against my wife in the semis. Last season, we also met here, and the outcome was the same. As I mentioned before, her pitching staff is a joke. She knows this. She drafted Carpenter as her #1 and just never recovered. Her ace for most of the season was Cole Hamels, but he got hurt.

She has a good bullpen that put up 8 saves and a solid offense, but never really had a chance this week and I took her down 11-1. Coincidentally, those were also my odds of getting laid that week.

Other Yahoo League

Here, I had the #2 seed. I thought I was in trouble going into the week because I had to watch last week as Sabathia, Beckett and Hudson all pitched twice during my bye week. This proved to be a big deal as the guy I was playing (#6 seed) had 2 starts from Peavy.

Sadly, my offense - led by Braun, Hanley Ramirez and the struggling Berkman, Hafner, Atkins and Sheffield - stumbled a bit.

Ramirez (.450, 2HR, 3 SB), Atkins (.429, 2HR, 4BI) and newly acquired hot bat Garrett Anderson (.348, 1HR, 5RBI) put up solid numbers.

Unfortunately Braun, Berkman, Hafner and Sheffield combined to hit just over .200. They chipped in a few homers, but not enough to make a difference. The real killers of my team, hoever, turned out to be at catcher and 2nd base. Which is probably where they often are. I wonder if I should show more interest in position scarcity next year? I know I won't, but should I?

On draft day, I selected Michael Barrett and Freddie Sanchez to fill those two spots. Not surprisingly, both are free agents in most leagues right now. For this week, I was going with Ryan Theriot and AJ Pierzynski. Monday-Friday, Theriot hit .080. He stole a base, but I still wanted to kill him. Friday night (yes, I don't have anything better to do on a Friday than make roster changes in a fantasy baseball league that isn't even for money) I replaced him with Pedroia, who was somehow a free agent. Pedroia finished the week going 0-8. AJ hit .118 for the week with a sub .300 OPS and a single steal.

For the week, I won steals by 3 and lost AVG and OPS by a decent margin. Most people wouldn't take the time to do the math, but I'm not most people. If I had simply not played anybody at catcher or 2b I would have won the week and moved on. Yes, my AVG and OPS would have been high enough to win. It wasn't though. And I lost to the #6 seed. A #6 seed who had named his team "Arod in Your Pujols" and thought himself clever for doing so.

CBS Keeper League

With the #4 seed here, I was playing the #5 seed, who happens to be my closest friend in this league. We met 3 times during the regular season and I had edged him out 19-16-1. My pitching was usually better than his and his Arod-led offense was usually better than mine.

I have often talked about the fact that I always seem to have a player just shit all over himself each week. A player who throws up an OPS under .300 or a pitcher who just gets crushed. This week was no different as Theriot went 2-25 with a steal and a .320 OPS. Generally, my opponents don't seem to do this. Or at least, didn't seem to do it.

This week, my buddy's team just completley folded. Disappeared. I had to go back 8 weeks to find an offensive output by his team that was this bad. His team put up 7 homers, which matched the total that his third baseman had put up the week before. C Figgins stole 5 bases, and Todd Helton hit 2 homers in one game for the first time since 2005, but that was really all he had. 6 of his 10 players had an OPS between .400-.650. That's just not getting it done.

That's even without mentioning the 5.35 ERA and 1.60 WHIP that his pitching staff coughed up, led by Kyle Kendrick (who was hit by a batted ball in the 4th inning, which probably helped his ERA) and Shawn Marcum. Marcum had been invaluable in a weekly league that allows an owner to put him in an RP spot all season. But not this week, as both the Yankees and Red Sox beat him around to the tune of a 10.60 ERA. It was the worst week I'd seen him have all season and for me, it couldn't have come at a better time.

My pitching was lead by James Shields, who's been a revelation since a midseason slump caused some idiot in my league to drop him. He went eight 4-hit innings and Blanton chipped in two quality wins. Kelvim Escobar continued what has become a troubling September slump by allowing another 6 runs. My Kevin Correia experiment is over. His ERA was good again, but his WHIP is high and seems to throw about 35 pitches per inning. Half of which tend to be balls.

For my offense, with the exception of Theriot, nobody had an OPS under .700, and Piazza might be ready for a nice hot streak, as he put up an OPS of 1.343. But the story of my team was the inspired return of Rafael Furcal and Jimmy Rollins who both stole a whopping 8 bases for the week. Furcal in fact, stole 4 in one game alone. This is what I've been waiting for. What all Furcal owners (and the Dodgers for that matter) have been waiting for, and it couldn't be coming at a better time.

Looking Ahead

In Yahoo, the finals are 2 weeks long, so in my LongTime League, I square off against the #6 seed, who upset the #2. Frankly, his team is unimposing. He has Santana and Escobar on the mound and an offense led by a bunch of Cubs (Soriano and Ramirez) and Morneau. I expect to win and win big.

CBSsportsline is set up for only a 1 week final. So this coming week is the Semis. I am unfortunately playing the #1 seed. His offense is led by Ryan Howard and Jim Thome with some help from Guerrero. He's got a good staff, but with Furcal scorching hot (and heading into Colorado for 4 games) and Piazza heating up, I just need a few more big games from Teixeira and Wright and maybe Hafner to step it up and I can win this and have a shot at $500. I'll have 2 starts from Smoltz and Shields and 2 from Kenny Rogers (at home vs. White Sox and in KC, both good matchups for Wins). Blanton is on the road so he's out and I guess I'll give Escobar one more shot to turn his September around. He's been so good for me, I feel like I have to. Of course, he doesn't know who I am, so he feels nothing. This could cost me.